Welcome to the second iteration of The Blue Line. Much like the first, the aim is to provide the listener’s of For The Kudos and its associated Patreon series with more running content to satisfy your dopamine addiction to all things Grattan House. The second iteration of The Blue Line will also aim to provide more of a one stop shop on items such as; show notes, merch drops, live show information and training diaries along with the occasional feature length piece.
Speaking specifically about Issue 18, with the dust having settled on his Melbourne run, Ryan Gregson’s journey from 1500m record holder to marathoner is in the spotlight. Will we be seeing more of Grego on the start line of a marathon? Also, there’s podcast highlights, a recap of Noosa, a mention of New York and a quick quiz. Hopefully we don’t get a stressy again and have to pause so we’ll jump straight into things this time with a nice big newsletter. That’s the way to do it right? Enjoy.
Main Show - Episode #73 Season Six
Quick insight into Stewy McSweyn math.
Brett ticks off his 5*4km marathon session before heading to
South AfricaFalls.How do you write ‘Joel had a good training week’ without patronising him?
Chasing Paris
Gen has cracked 150km a week while averaging low 3:20’s for her marathon pace workouts amid challenging personal life circumstances (acid poo’s).
Andy is keeping us on the edge of our seesaws with his training recently. A mixture of good,
the bad and the uglyand some rest but in his back pocket is years of long runs so he’s not too down. Plus he’s at Falls!The discussion around Sports Integrity Australia on #5 was an off-topic highlight that provided some excellent insight into elite athlete whereabouts testing.
Live, Laugh, Love, with Jack, fuck & Run, with Jack, Joel and Brett
Jack refused to sing the R&B National Anthem mix-up he created
So he won every domestic road race he entered over the last few episodes
And washed it down with a rendition of ‘let me here you say, waaa-ooo’ while gurgling water.
Professional athletes often talk about their longevity in the sport. They don’t have a lifetime of being an elite so they have to make the most of it. For gymnasts that might be their teenage years. For swimmers, getting into their late 20’s is a good effort. For runners, well, it depends on life circumstances, events and overall motivation. Most follow the typical path of track 1500’s and 3k’s then move out to the roads then onto the marathon and then into the retirement village (A.K.A coaching).
For Australian middle distance fans of the early to mid 2000’s this meant watching stars like Craig Mottram and Collis Birmingham squeeze everything out of their career and run dry when they hit the half and full marathon. It makes sense from a physiological view. Run out of speed? Move to the marathon. From a mental viewpoint though, signing up to increase your overall training volume and race duration seems like the progression is around the wrong way. Older athletes tend to do less in other sports, not more. After being at the top of the 1500m game for Australia and holding the national record for over ten years was Ryan Gregson (or Grego as he’s known on FTK) going to follow in the footsteps of others who “go to finish up in the marathon” or is he just getting started again?
Let’s wind it back first. 2021 was Ryan’s last full track season. Having missed the Tokyo Olympics and feeling like he was stagnating a bit Ryan switched up his training. A difficult 2022 followed with a foot injury that made running around a track painful. No better motivation to force you to change events than the inability to run on the event surface. Having always been a fan of marathoners “watching their Strava for entertainment” Grego was keen to continue pushing his running further and wanted to move onto a new event before he had totally finished up. ‘I knew I had more in me’ says Grego. Switching to only 2 sessions a week gave the then 32 year old more time to recover throughout an interrupted 2022 but it gave Grego enough hope that he could still live the professional life he had put so much effort into building.
After being involved with the Maurie Plant meet as a way of saying thanks to Maurie, Grego switched over to full road racing mode for 2023. Surely having come off injuries in 2022, and some injuries in the early 2010’s there was some trepidation about stepping up volume? Not really according to Grego, “having injuries at an early age gave me the skills to be able to cope with them later” if they did appear. His approach to training was also quite conservative throughout most of 2023. “I definitely wasn’t overreaching which I had a habit of doing”. We’re talking weekly averages around 155 - 160 km's a week, just off your standard 180-200 km's reached by most of his competitors. A few months at that level allowed Grego to get his first couple of halves ticked at Launceston, Gold Coast and then Sunshine Coast. No big issues, no super fast times, just runs on the board following the standard Tuesday track, Wednesday mid-week long run, Friday thresholds and Sunday long run like many of his fellow MTC training partners.
A few successful halves are great but what really matters to the Type A personality is putting it on the line in a marathon. 1500’s you get several opportunities across a season to shoot the lights out. The marathon gives you one or two good chances a year. Bad race? “Cop it and grieve” says Grego. Rather than be nervous about the increase in training and racing pressure “it was certainly exciting” says the 33 year old sounding more like a 23 year old. For his 8 week specific block Grego picked up the average weekly mileage to around 170-175km, ticking off his six key marathon sessions with his typical Type A personality shining through. “Gen probably talks it up a bit but I do like to make sure if I’m doing something I’m doing it right. I’m a natural overthinker”.
The overall outcome from this new version of Ryan Gregson was a debut 2:14:54 marathon and 2nd place overall at Melbourne. This puts him 8th on the list of Aussies who’ve raced a marathon over the last two years which may not be a super fast time to Ryan but is still bringing him in contention to represent Australia again. “100% I’d like to represent Australia again, but the goal is to just become better at the marathon first, improve my time in the half, give myself more of a buffer there and then continue to run a few more marathons. I just wanted to enjoy Melbourne and I did so that’s great and I want to keep enjoying it”. The only part Ryan maybe didn’t enjoy, and is obvious to those who’ve watched it, is the hamstring cramp he nursed through the final 5km’s. “I just need more conditioning which will come over doing another block. The frustrating thing about the cramp is that my average heart rate for the whole trip was 161 bpm so my engine is good, I just need a bit more conditioning”.
That next block of marathon training is a while off yet for the 23 33 year old. Recovery is the priority first and then some more training over summer with the intention to whittle down his half marathon PB to something around 62:30. “I went through Melbourne in around 66:40 which is exactly three minutes off my half PB” so a bit more breathing space would give Grego some confidence next time he’s rolling through the 21.1km mark of a marathon. When that next marathon is is unknown. Fortunately for Australian fans and the competitive marathon scene, Grego’s invested for 4-5 years and maybe longer. “Who knows, we (Gen and Archer too) have set-up our lives with our coaching business and base in Brisbane so that we can continue to be professional athletes for as long as we want”. Good news for both running fans and the babysitting industry of Brisbane.
ASICS Noosa Bolt 5km
Domestically, the ASICS Noosa Bolt was held on Saturday in perfect twilight conditions. Jack and Caitlin Adams went in as defending champions and came out as defending champions using slightly different strategies. Jack went out solo at 2:30/km pace on the initial slight downhill, picked off the women’s field (who started two minutes up the road) and finished first overall in 13:56. Jack’s strategy and recap is of course available in full on Patreon however as a teaser when asked about the effect having the women up the road has on him, Jack replied ‘(I’m) mainly focused on beating the men although chasing down the lead girls is a nice incentive to go quicker as you get to see exactly how much you’re gaining on them at each turn’. It also provides probably the only acceptable scenario where a moustachioed male in their late 20’s can chase a pack of females… and be cheered on.
Caitlin meanwhile went for a different strategy. ‘I controlled the race from the front and really had to continue to push and surge every lap - it was really hard. Cara (Feain-Ryan) and Zoe (Buckman) were sticking to me like glue and I certainly didn’t want to end up in a sprint finish. I put in a final surge going into the final turn, I believe that is when Cara dropped off’ described Caitlin. When Jack came through ‘I thought it was Cara and was worried because I did not know if I had any gears left’. Demonstrating that the women being in front of the men is a symbiotic race relationship, Caitlin ‘tried to latch on and use Jack to pull (her) through to the line’. Her winning time, 16:00, was her quickest ever on the course from four efforts.
This masthead then pressed her on some comments she made post-race that indicated she felt the pressure this year to perform. ‘I guess a few more eyes were on me as defending champ and the fact that I’ve had a solid year of results and have just returned home from World Road Running Champs. Last year I was elated to win, this year was more so happiness mixed with a huge sense of relief… This year was a big year of stepping up for me and really trying to embrace the pressure that I put on myself, the expectation of others and being consistent in my performances as an elite.’
Put this in contrast to her 2022 victory at Noosa where, admittedly selling herself short, she went in as an underdog, something Caitlin was quite comfortable with. ‘As a junior I loved the sport but I really wasn’t any good until I had a breakout year as a 19/20 year old. Because of this I’ve always really embraced and been comfortable with the underdog mindset’.
That makes it two wins in two years for Caitlin as an underdog and a big dog. How will her ability to embrace the pressure translate to an upcoming dig at Zatopek? ‘I still feel like a bit of an underdog on the track …when it comes to 10,000m on the track I haven’t had the best results in the past. My track PB is nearly a minute slower than what I can run on the road and I believe that my best finishing position was 4th a couple of years ago (correct!). Zatopek is always a hard race because in Australia you only get one good 10,000m opportunity a year and that happens to be Aus champs. It’s a lot of pressure and I’m working really hard in training to be comfortable with laps on laps and be ready for that one day in the year when you get to run one and it counts, when an Australian title is up for grabs. I’m excited to really have a crack this year, hopefully that results in a medal or my first title, we’ll see!’.
The Zatopek:10 is on Saturday December 2nd at Lakeside Stadium where Caitlin, Jack and our other top elites are expected to be on the start line.
New York City Marathon
The last major of the year was completed in New York last weekend. Reading the previews would’ve led you to believe a women’s CR was on the cards given the depth involved however the opposite happened. A sprint finish between three ladies ended in a Hellen Obiri win in a ‘slow’ time of 2:27:53. Tamirat Tola, the former World Champ who dropped out of the Sydney field this year, rolled home first in the men’s in a CR time of 2:04:58. Canadian Cam Levins did not finish despite having his training talked up on Chasing Paris earlier in the day. Full recap with a Cam Levins bias available here. (By the way, this is the video the CP trio talked about).
Shirts, hoodies and mugs have all been restocked. Joel’s at the ready to send them out via his elaborate packaging system so get your early Christmas presents sorted and give him a reason to keep him from locking up while doing deliveries.
How well do you know our top marathoners?
Grego’s debut was 8th on the Australian list of top male marathon performances over the last two years. Similarly, or spookily, Gen came in at 7th with her Gold Coast time.
Can you name the other 13 athletes ahead of them and in order?
Aside from regular programming on the podcast, here’s a list of races and events to keep an eye on over the next month. If you have a contribution for this section that the Grattan House community should know about, get in touch.
Garmin Giveaway - Nathan Pearce (trail running and Garmin guru) joins Dave for a Q & A Session.
November 19 - Point to Pinnacle Road Race
December 2 - On Track Nights Zatopek:10 (Australian 10,000m Championships)
December 3 - Fukuoka Marathon
December 3 - Valencia Marathon
December 23 - Albie Thomas Mile (Australian Mile Championships)
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Thank you for reading this far. Share it to your running mates, print it out to make you look important at work or use it to slide into someone’s DM’s with… ‘Hey did you read this knob heads thoughts on The Blue Line?’...
How well do you know our top marathoners answer:
Males: Brett Robinson (2:07), Liam Adams (2:08), Andy Buchanan (2:10), Pat Tiernan (2:11), Ed Goddard (2:12), Reece Edwards (2:13), Thomas Do Canto (2:14).
Females: Sinead Diver (2:21), Lisa Weightman (2:23), Eloise Wellings (2:25), Jess Stenson (2:25), Milly Clark (2:26), Izzy Batt-Doyle (2:27)